Girl Meets STEM
Girl Meets STEM (formerly known as Girl Meets Sludge) is the twenty-sixth episode in season 2 of Girl Meets World and the 47th episode overall. It aired on January 8, 2016 to 1.6 million viewers. Overview Riley is upset when the boys at school won’t let her participate in a science experiment and attempts to become more involved. Plot In Mr. Norton's science class, where Riley is lab partnered with Farkle while Maya is paired with Lucas, Norton's mid-term experiment for the class is for one half of each team come back after school and drop a "mystery marble' into a beaker filled with a clear solution, while the next day the other partner analyzes the resulting sludge and figures out how to turn it back into clear liquid. More important, both partners in each group will get one shared grade. Maya, who loathes science class, doesn’t want to do anything at all, so Lucas enlists her to drop the marble after school (and even that she doesn't want to do). Riley, however, is offended when Farkle insists she drop the marble while he does the rest of the work. When she walks into the classroom to drop the marble, she notices that every single boy-girl team sent the girl to drop the marble so the boy could do the science. Riley is outraged, and refuses to drop her marble. When Farkle comes into class the next day and sees that Riley didn’t drop the marble (which causes him to faint twice), he futilely begs Mr. Norton to give them separate grades, blaming Riley for not doing her part. Riley makes a feministic speech, and calls all the girls to join her in The Bay Window, where Riley has Topanga give the girls a talk about how women tend to drift away from STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math) because they think they’re supposed to, but that they shouldn’t be afraid to pursue their dreams out of fear for how it will make them look. The next day in Cory's class, the girls collectively call out the boys for not believing in them enough to let them do the science; Farkle denies Riley's accusation and apologizes for taking on the work himself and not helping Riley to improve. Later in science class, the girls and the boys are each in their own groups separately working on the experiment: the boys are futilely analyzing the sludge while Maya, with the other girls watching intently, is bringing another beaker of sludge to a boil. Riley asks Farkle why he didn’t believe a girl could do the science; citing Marie Curie, Farkle counters that his decision to have her drop the marble was solely because of his own personal knowledge of science and not because Riley is a girl. He also reveals that after examining the marble Riley didn’t drop, he found that it’s only mud, so he doesn’t get the significance of the experiment. Seeing the other girls about to sacrifice Yogi to Maya's boiling sludge, Riley surmises that the project was never about the sludge at all. As all the other teams have failed to turn their sludge back into a clear liquid, Riley and Farkle's liquid is clear because she refused to drop the marble, and Mr. Norton congratulates Riley for figuring it out; echoing Topanga's talk, Norton says that girls often do tend to abandon the study of science, and that most of the girls in Norton's class agree to drop the marble without even thinking about it, leaving the boys to do the science. Keeping thorough notes for the past 35 years, Norton has conducted the experiment annually in the hope of raising awareness of the girls' individual potentials and to keep the boys and girls working together as equals. Subplot After single-handedly defeating Auggie's team in soccer 29 goals to zero, Ava is livid when she sees that Auggie was given a trophy exactly the same as hers. With Topanga taking her side, Ava rebukes Auggie for standing around "like a fire hydrant" and urges him to at least try so he can get better, but when Auggie fails to see the point behind trying since he got a trophy anyway, Ava (after biting the head off of his trophy) angrily chases Auggie to his bedroom. The next day, Auggie's realizes his own soccer skills, and Ava declares she wants Auggie on her team next year. Cast Main cast *Rowan Blanchard as Riley Matthews *Ben Savage as Cory Matthews *Sabrina Carpenter as Maya Hart *Peyton Meyer as Lucas Friar *August Maturo as Auggie Matthews *Corey Fogelmanis as Farkle Minkus / Brenda *Danielle Fishel as Topanga Matthews Guest cast *Jeff Doucette as Mr. Norton *Amir Mitchell-Townes as Zay Babineaux *Nicholas Jabonero as Yogi *Ava Kolker as Ava Morgenstern *Haley Hauser as Haley *Sarah Carpenter as Sarah *Darby Walker as Darby Walker *Yindra Zayas as Yindra Quotes International Premieres * June 6, 2016 (Israel) * June 24, 2016 (Philippines) *August 18, 2016 (Latin America, Brazil) Trivia *STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. *This is the first episode that aired in 2016. *This episode deals with gender bias and equality. *This is the first episode a lesson taught by Cory is irrelevant to the main plot. *Maya falls asleep during class. *Auggie (6) plays soccer for the Frogs, Ava (10) plays for the Crushers. The Crushers beat the Frogs 29-0. *The cast wrapped up the filming this episode on June 30, 2015. *The Science classroom number is 15. *The life lesson is taught by Mr. Norton (Science Teacher). *Brenda makes her third appearance. *Final appearance of Haley in Season 2. *The girls reprise the Mayaville chant from Girl Meets Rules. *Mr. Norton claims to have used the Marble Experiment for 35 years. *Originally, the Science teacher was named Murphy, but was changed during production to Norton, probably in honor of Ed Norton (the character played by Art Carney from the 1950's TV series The Honeymooners) who as an "underground sanitation engineer" was very familiar with sludge. This appears confirmed when in the tag, Maya calls out the name in the same way Ralph Kramden, (Norton's best friend, played by Jackie Gleason) always did. *The First Battle of Panipat occurred in Northern India in 1526, and is considered to be among the earliest conflicts which extensively used weaponry based on the technological advances of gunpowder. *Yogi reveals he does not enjoy being carried around as much as Darby believes. *Although Nicholas Jabonero appears (with speaking dialogue) as Yogi, his name isn't seen in this episode's end credits. ' ' *Science Class Teams: **Lucas & Maya **Riley & Farkle **Zay & Sarah **Haley & Wyatt **Yindra & Dave **Darby & Yogi Goofs *After Topanga drinks the glass of orange juice, she puts it on the table. In the next shot, the glass is full again, but in the following shot, it is once again empty. *After Riley and Maya throw sludge on Farkle, the camera cuts back to the girls and none of the girls have sludge on them. 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